


On The Diamond Mountain

by theprophetlemonade



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, Extended One Shot, Feelings, Gift Fic, Herbology, JM Secret Santa 2015, JM!exchange challenge, M/M, Magic, Magical Realism, Mentions of alcohol, Mentions of drugs, Modern Fantasy, Pining, Political Discourse, Secrets, Short Story, Some Politics and Dystopian Elements, Speculative fiction, Third Person POV, UK Politics, UK Setting, Witch Hunters, Witches, Witchraft, background springles, background yumikuri, it's so British that it hurts, self discovery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-08 20:14:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5511608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theprophetlemonade/pseuds/theprophetlemonade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three years ago, the government of the United Kingdom put into law a provision to prevent the practice of witchcraft, which has led to the establishment of judicial bureaus dedicated to the task of rounding up those who delve in magical practices.</p><p>Three years on, and witches are disappearing. </p><p>Jean Kirschtein is a witch hunter, assigned to the village of Trost with his team to investigate a report of a coven that has so far avoided detection by the authorities - except, can he really be called a witch hunter if he's not actually ever caught any witches? His colleagues won't let him forget his less-than-impressive track record with arrests, but it's really the least of his worries. </p><p>What he finds in Trost is beyond anything he could have imagined.</p><p>A story about witches and witch hunters, cold winters, bad dreams, and falling in love, for Iris.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On The Diamond Mountain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [irislullaby](https://archiveofourown.org/users/irislullaby/gifts).



> ¡Felices Fiestas, Iris! Te deseo una Feliz Navidad y Próspero Año Nuevo … y espero que disfrute de esta historia. Me gustó mucha la tema (por supuesto, estoy interesado en las brujas y la brujería así que cuando recibí la idea, me enganché) y espero que te guste este primer capítulo. ¡Habrá más pronto! (Y lo siento por mi español.)
> 
> And happy holidays everyone else! This is my entry to this year's JM Secret Santa, which you can see ran away with me, and became a multichapter. It shouldn't be too long, but I hope you like it as something a little different to my usual jam. Witchcraft is something I've been meaning to write about.
> 
> This fic is very English, so enjoy the colloquialisms and the slang that I have to try so hard to leave out of my other works lmao. Also a lot of the details are deliberately vague, and will be revealed in more depth in later chapters. The political system I've created is very complicated though, so don't worry if you don't get it. It's supposed to be an allegory for the state of British politics at the moment. 
> 
> Please let me know how you like it! Comments are loved and adored, and my Tumblr inbox is always open!
> 
> Until 2016!
> 
> \- Lucy

“Still round the corner there may wait

A new road or a secret gate

And though I oft have passed them by

A day will come at last when I

Shall take the hidden paths that run

West of the Moon, East of the Sun.”

― **J.R.R. Tolkien**

 

“Destroy my desires, eradicate my ideals, show me something better, and I will follow you.”

―  **Fyodor Dostoyevsky** , _Notes from the Underground_

 

"You have witchcraft in your lips

There is more eloquence in a sugar touch of them."

― **William Shakespeare** , _Henry V: Act 5, Scene 2_

 

* * *

 

“Your liver is going to give up on you before you reach thirty,” Levi deadpans. “If I didn’t need this job, I would stop selling you beer, Kirschtein.”

It’s cold, and the wind outside is rattling relentlessly against the automatic doors of the shop that Jean has stumbled into; it’s not a night to have forgotten his coat on the walk home from work, and his red cheeks sting as a reward. January in the shittier end of the city is crisp, but miserable; the concrete jungle of the city centre is dreary, and the winds that rattle through the streets home are harsh and violent, scathing like a whip-sharp insult.

Jean’s not in the mood for pleasantries – not that Levi ever has any time for those.

“Piss off,” he grumbles, gritting his teeth and squaring his jaw. He tries to hold his head high, but Levi stares him down mercilessly from behind the register, an eyebrow quirked high and his arms crossed dismissively across his chest. For all Jean’s bravado – and Levi’s short stature – Jean is always more than a little unnerved by the lecture he receives every Friday night when he dips into the Co-op on the way home from the office. “It’s Friday. I’m allowed a drink. Pass us a pack of Reds too, would you?”

Levi purses his lips, but turns to the shelves behind him, retrieving a pack of cigarettes. He rings them up, and then slides them across the counter to Jean begrudgingly.

“The boss is not going to be happy if you die on the job,” he says. “You’re fucking yourself over.”

“You can’t tell me that when you’re a smoker too,” Jean gripes.

“I quit.”

“When?”

“Yesterday.”

Jean snorts loudly, gathering up his six-pack of beer and pack of cigarettes from the counter; he props the beer under his arm, and rips open the cigarettes with his teeth, biting hold of one between his lips.

“Doesn’t count,” he mumbles.

This happens most Fridays. Jean would even deign to say that it’s a typical Friday – which doesn’t say much about the quality of a social life he has when his human interaction for the week revolves around the guys at work and arguing with the cashier at the corner shop. Honestly, he’s pretty sure he’s just bitter because he knows Levi is judging Jean over the prospect of him going home and sitting on the couch to have all of those beers by himself. He wishes his downtime were more exciting – if only to save the blows to his fragile ego that Levi’s disparagement inflicts.

“I want my pension,” Levi replies, “If I smoke myself to death before I’m sixty, government isn’t going to pay up.”

Jean glances around the store; it’s late at night, probably just after midnight, and the aisles are empty. He decides he can dawdle, as he’s not holding up any queue for the register. (And maybe he’ll be lucky and the wind and driving rain outside will relent before he has to make the run home.)

“Explains this then,” Jean says, gesturing vaguely at the distasteful black-and-green uniform Levi has been shoehorned into. “Working the second job. Better to be safe than sorry. I guess civil service doesn’t pay so good anymore, huh?”

“You know as well as I do that Erwin’s the only one who Parliament even acknowledges,” Levi shrugs, “He gets the perks of the job. I get the shit on the bottom of my feet.” He reaches across the counter and grabs the cigarette hanging unlit from Jean’s lips, tucking it behind his own ear. Jean scowls, but Levi’s face doesn’t change from blankly bored. “Besides,” he continues, “Working here, I can criticise punks like you for their grocery shopping. And I get dental. Don’t get that from the bloody Bureau.”

“Maybe I should think about a change in career,” Jean mutters darkly, easing a second cigarette from his packet, eyeing Levi’s thrifty hands sceptically.

“Maybe you should,” Levi agrees, “You still haven’t made an arrest, have you? Mikasa’s last report was pretty damning.”

Jean presses his lips into a tight line around his cigarette.

“I’m off the clock,” he says gruffly, “You’re not supposed to criticising me when I’m not at the office.”

“I got a new assignment from Erwin,” Levi continues, completely ignoring Jean’s protestations. “Connie and Sasha are already in the back. I think Mikasa is coming too. We’re looking over the case files. I figure you’d want a chance to redeem yourself and that I could grab you on your weekly … perseverance of your bachelorhood.”

Jean glances towards the staff door over Levi’s shoulder, and frowns. His ratty sofa and the damp walls of his flat call to him, but he knows Levi only deals in rhetorical questions.

“It really says something when we’re having our staff meetings in the stock room of a Co-op,” he says. “I know they do Co-op Funeralcare, but Co-op Government Lackeys is a new one. Money’s really that tight, huh? Y’know, we do have an office for this sort of stuff.”

“Shut up and get your ass back there,” Levi grouses, “I’ve got to lock up, but I want to brief you all whilst I have you in one place for once. Go split your beer with the others. Save yourself from an early grave, Kirschtein.”

 

* * *

 

Levi is right. When Jean slips into the stock room, he finds Connie and Sasha squatting on two boxes of potatoes, playing Go Fish with a pack of playing cards that have seen better days; and Mikasa, lent against the wall, eyes glued to her mobile phone that illuminates her stony face in white light. She’s wearing a dark navy pea coat over the top of a knee-length dress; her heels are pointed-toe, and her usual red scarf is draped elegantly around her neck. Jean feels a little hot beneath the collar.

“Hey, Miks,” he says, loosening the tie around his neck as casually as he can manage. His clothes are still rain-splattered, his shirt near see-through; he looks like a wreck. “Y-you look nice. Special occasion?”

Mikasa glances up at him, and her bored expression gives Levi’s a run for its money.

“Eren is back,” she says softly, “We went out.” The dryness behind her eyes seems to dissolve as she looks Jean up and down, taking in his rumpled appearance. “Did you just get out of the office for the night?”

“Yeah,” Jean shrugs, trying to sound nonchalant. The six-pack of beer pressed against his hip is beginning to dig into his skin, so he gives up and props it on the floor. The speed at which Connie and Sasha’s heads snap away from their card game, like blood hounds on the scent for alcohol, is alarming. Jean tries to ignore it, but knows he twitches irately as Connie begins to slink from his makeshift stool. “Long shift. Still writing up some of the paperwork from last time. How— how was your week off?”

Mikasa lifts her thin shoulders and then lets them fall again. She extends a foot as Connie tries to scamper past her, and he trips with a yelp, collapsing on his face on the hard floor.

“Boring,” she admits, “Can I have a beer?”

“S-sure!” Jean stutters, reaching down to rip out a bottle from the cardboard framework, despite his fingers shaking. It’s ridiculous, if he’s honest – (Mikasa has been his partner ever since he started this new job, which has been almost a year now) – because he still has the most obscene school-boy crush on her. He knows that nothing’s going to come of it, but it’s usually what he gets singled-out for at the staff drinks’ party that Erwin tries to throw at the end of every month without fail, and that Levi tries to grunt his way out of, without fail. (The Christmas party had involved a very inebriated Connie stealing his wife’s red lipstick and fashioning a scarf out of his tie and attempting to smother Jean in kisses whilst masquerading as the object of his one-sided affections. Jean only wishes he had drunk more to forget.)

Jean’s pretty sure he’s red in the face as he hands Mikasa a beer. He’s definitely sure he’s red when she thanks him with a pretty smile.

He tries not to dwell on it too much – she’s way out of his league. And possibly accounted for, given how much she and Eren hang out. She’s always been pleasant to work with, and made acclimatising to the job a breeze, but she’s never batted an eye in _that_ direction at Jean. He’s had time to make his peace with it.

She opens the beer bottle expertly, knocking the cap against the wall and jimmying it off in one quick tap. She slurps the froth before even a drop rolls down the outside of the bottle.

Okay, so that gives Jean the littlest of boners. It’s hot. It doesn’t hurt to admit that.

When he glances down at his feet – mainly to check that there isn’t an obvious strain in his slacks – he sees Connie lying face down on the ground, a hand outstretched.

“Beer … please … ” comes a muffled groan as Connie wriggles his fingers expectantly. “Please … I need … a beer … ”

Jean scowls, and pushes the five remaining bottles a little further away from Connie with the side of his foot.

“Shoulda brought your own, Springer,” he says firmly.

“How’d _I_ know we were gonna get a call from the mini-boss at ten to midnight on a Friday,” Connie grouses, lifting his head to glare at Jean from the floor. “I was in my pyjamas until twenty minutes ago. We were about to go to _bed_.”

“It’s true,” Sasha pipes up, sounding a little more perky than her husband. “Getting two assignments in the same month these days is rare. I was surprised.”

Levi bursts in at that moment, heavy-handed as usual on the door as it slams against the wall, and pre-emptively grumbling in the way he plants his feet as he stalks towards Connie and Sasha’s potato-box table and chairs. There’s a folder tucked beneath his arm, and he’s thrown a hoodie over the top of his work shirt.

Immediately, Mikasa and Sasha gravitate towards him as he slumps down on one of the boxes, laying out the paperwork in the folder on the other. Jean moves to join them, but not before he has to kick Connie’s greedy hand away from his beer once more. He mouths a string of curses at his co-worker, but receives a cheeky, lopsided grin in return at Connie scrambles to his feet and dances over to Levi’s shoulder brazenly.

“Right,” Levi says, and he sounds just as thrilled as the others to be there. Jean drifts to Mikasa’s side and peers down over the files Levi has spread out. He recognises the familiar insignia of the Royal Family at the top of the first page, the lion and the unicorn on either side of the shield, supporting it proudly and defending it vicariously. Below that is the portcullis of Parliament, adorned by another crown. Jean’s always thought it funny how Parliament likes to pretend it’s doing the bidding of the Queen, when the whole country knows that Kensington Palace has been a trophy wife of the Prime Minister for years.

“This should be an easy one,” Levi continues, passing Connie a stack of paper documents to distribute amongst them. “It’s not going to be like the Monday before last with those three bastards down in Stohess.”

“I still have heart palpitations thinking about that,” Connie says, theatrically pressing his palm against his chest. “Shit was scary.”

“I thought I was gonna die,” Sasha agrees sagely. “I’ve never seen so many disembowelled newts in one place. I thought I was going to be turned into a toad, or something.”

“You weren’t going to die,” Jean grunts. “Mikasa was there. And she bailed you guys out, remember?”

“She also bailed _you_ out,” Sasha pouts, pulling a face, “Don’t tell me you weren’t pooping your pants over that Reiner guy. He was enormous. And a necromancer. A _necromancer_! You were totally frozen to the spot, Jean.”

“At least I didn’t nearly end up in the hospital,” Jean grumbles, “Anyway, Mikasa’s my partner, so— so we’re _meant_ to have each other’s backs. We’re not meant to be covering your arses too—”

“Please, Mikasa could do both your jobs single-handedly,” Connie laughs, “You’re just—”

“Which is why Mikasa has three more arrests on her record than all of you!” Levi barks, and when Jean snorts triumphantly at Connie, he snaps, “And why you have zero, Kirschtein!” They all silence; Jean swallows thickly, immediately turning his eyes to the floor sheepishly. Mikasa slurps quietly on her beer beside him, completely unperturbed. “Shut your mouths and let me talk. I want to go home as much as you lot.”

Connie and Sasha grumble, but one sideways glance from Levi has them standing ramrod straight, chins high and arms folded behind their backs like soldiers at attention. Levi scowls, but continues sceptically.

“There’s a village called Trost, about an hour outside of Bristol,” he says sternly. Mikasa hands Jean the last sheet of paper from the pile being passed around, which has his name scrawled in Levi’s messy handwriting in the top right corner. Jean scans the text quickly, focussing on the mission directive in the centre of the page. “Erwin wants one team down there – so I’m going to send two to avoid a repeat of _last time_ – to investigate some rumours. Supposedly we’ve got a coven, but only a small one. Two, or three at max—”

“No necromancers?” Sasha butts in.

“No necromancers,” Levi sighs, “Clairvoyance at worst, a bit of herbology at best. That’s if this isn’t just another case of some old bat confusing a goth for a witch again. Or a hipster for a witch. Or a university student for a witch. Anyway. You shouldn’t have trouble. But that’s what I said last time.”

Connie and Sasha look meek, and Jean tries to hide his embarrassment behind his sheet of paper.

“It’s rural, so you’ll be able to avoid much civilian involvement this time around, _thankfully_ ,” Levi continues, sifting through the documents in front of him to find some grainy-looking photos, which he arranges neatly on the potato box; Jean thinks they show the outlines of some rustic-looking houses, but he can’t be sure. “I don’t want another civil suit on my hands. Just do some digging, figure out what’s going on down there, and make the arrest. And let Jean make the arrest, if you can—”

“—I am here, y’know—”

“—because he still hasn’t even picked up _one_ , and it’s an embarrassment to the department. I don’t want the Birmingham division to get up in our grill again. I can’t fucking cope with Hanji on a normal day.”

The others nod in solidarity and Jean pouts, folding his arms. It irks him when the others remind him about his lack of success on the field when they’re drinking, but it’s downright _unfair_ when Levi brings it up during staff meetings – which happens more often that Jean wants to deal with. He can’t talk back when it’s _Levi_ telling him that he’s useless.

He only got into this job because it’s what his parents did before they died – and he figured if they were good at it, he’d be good at it too, and it would be better than wasting his life away on the couch of his folks’ apartment, surfing through Netflix and consuming quantities of alcohol that would give Levi a migraine to think about. His parents would be proud of him having a respectable career working for the government. That was Jean’s reasoning, at least.

It’s not his fault he hasn’t got an arrest yet – he’s had other stuff on his mind. First there was, y’know – actually coming to terms with their business and _what he was doing_ , and not constantly insisting everyone was pulling his leg for the sake of an inside joke. (Levi’s deadpan expression had straightened out his disbelief pretty quickly.) And then there was funeral arrangements for his parents, and dealing with their accounts, and collecting insurance pay-outs, and— and a whole lot of nightmares, Jean is reluctant to admit. (But it’s not like it was their career that did them in. That’s one thing that consoles him.)

And to make matters worse, he’s partnered with Mikasa, who’s not only good at what they do, but bloody _spectacular_ , and really, how is he meant to keep up with that? Whenever they’re on a mission together, he’ll be checking them into the hotel, scribbling his name in the visitor’s book— and when he turns around with their room keys spinning around his fingers, she’ll already have a line of suspects in handcuffs, and be ready to head back to the office. It’s happened more than once.

He can’t help being inadequate in _her_ shadow, come on—

“Operation: help Jean lose his witch hunting virginity,” Connie sniggers, “Got it, mini-boss. Piece of cake.”

“I will rip your testicles off and sell them to my customers if you call me that again, Springer,” Levi deadpans, and Jean is sure Connie’s spirit ascends towards the troposphere with the sound of a deflating balloon. “You leave tomorrow. Read over the briefing tonight, and if you have any questions, shove them up your—”

Yeah, it’s a typical Friday night. If you work for the government hunting _witches_.

 

* * *

 

Jean has been on precisely thirteen investigations in his time with the Bureau for the Investigation of Witchcraft and Related Practices – which apparently isn’t a lot for the course of a year. Connie and Sasha complain about it a lot – they’ve been working for the government for a lot longer than Jean has, and are eager to bemoan the loss of their Christmas bonuses – and they reminisce about the early days of the job when they were out of the office two or three times a week on business, and there were still _witches to catch_.

That’s the main problem, of course.

Jean was eighteen when the coalition government dissolved – eighteen and a fresh-faced university student, pumped up on picket-fence ideas and the fervour of law school classrooms, and _furious_ over the prospect of Conservative control in Parliament.

He was twenty-three when a portion of the government mutinied against the Conservatives in the name of reclaiming the right-wing of politics; the existing government lost out to their new rivals, led by the pompous and uncharismatic Rod Reiss – the definition of a slimy politician if ever Jean knew one – who knew how to tick boxes and play on people’s fears of something different.

It was weird at first: adapting to a theocracy. That was the selling point of the new government; that was the way they rallied people to their sides. The promise of religious ideals and safety and self-righteous _morality_ at the right hand of the new laws that were suddenly swept so quickly through Parliament in the months that followed the election. People cheered at the thought of going to war; people were more willing to scorn those who were different; people became ready to throw the things they didn’t understand behind bars, and lock them away out of thought and out of mind for all eternity. People didn’t realise that it wasn’t religion they were putting their faith in – something so twisted by political scheming could never be called a religion in Jean’s eyes – but instead, in people hungry for hatred and control.

The government witch hunts had started not long after the election, with just that: _witches_.

Jean always felt a little caught – between the left-wing idealism he had left behind in the hallways of his university, and the fact his parents were on the pay roll of the new government – and found himself drifting.

He was never different. He never suffered directly. He was never affected by the thought of the new government hunting down people it didn’t like. Maybe that’s why he ended up here – because he never cared enough to aim for something elsewhere.

Jean is twenty-five now; he turns twenty-six in the spring.

The Bureau has been hunting witches – witches, shamans, folk-healers, and kids who enchant their school textbooks for better grades in their exams with spells they learned on the internet – for three years now, and those that are left are few and far between, often hidden away in the ruins of the world, concealed in the rural outstretches of Scotland, or having fled England for somewhere safer.

It’s safety that people fear, and scaremongering that keeps Jean in his job. The government are afraid of witches because they’re strange, they’re not explainable by science _or_ religion, they’re _alien_ – and the people are afraid of witches because they think they can hurt them. They think that witches are dangerous.

Back when Jean was the one sitting on the couch, jumping between jobs straight out of university, and watching his parents disappear a few times a week for somewhere new, he wondered about how some kid with an interest in herbs and plants and making lucky charms to protect their loved ones could be anything of a threat – but the government never differentiated between them, and those involved in the blacker practices.

Jean has seen both the good and the bad. He’s seen things he believed were only fairy tales as a child. He’s seen things that gave him nightmares for weeks afterwards. He’s seen kids terrified out of their minds because they’ve got handcuffs on their wrists, and their parents are shaking their heads, and they’ve got a life behind bars dressed-up as rehabilitation ahead of them.

Jean’s job is to arrest them all, regardless.

 

* * *

 

Jean is honestly surprise that they make it to Trost the next morning on time – given he’s not finished packing for the trip until ten minutes before Mikasa is set to pick him up in her Range Rover, and then they have to double back to the office not one, not twice, but three times to collect things Connie and Sasha had forgotten. (How does a witch hunter forget their _taser_ , Jean berates from the front seat of the car, reciting the guidebook he learned in training by rote. He earns a hefty kick to the back of his seat from Sasha is response, and a threat from Connie to see how that taser tastes against his throat.)

What should be an hour drive takes them nearly two, and by the time they’ve left the dual carriageway for the winding country lanes of Somerset, car-sickness is dawning on Jean. It’s mid-January – possibly the bleakest time of year, in Jean’s opinion – and the hedgerows are crystalline with frozen spider webs, the roads flooded with muddy puddles, and the sky a morose shade of grey, that doesn’t quite threaten rain, but definitely misery. Jean presses his cheek against the window of the car – at least it’s cold. It makes him feel a little bit better.

“So tell me why,” Connie laments from the back seat, where he’s almost horizontal across Sasha, “Witches can’t live in cities like normal people? What’s with the countryside living in the middle of nowhere? Don’t they want electricity? McDonald’s? Cheeky ‘Spoons on a Saturday night? Where even are we? Are we in the right place? I don’t know, because all I’ve seen is sheep for the last _one million miles_.”

“We’re in the _Mendips_ ,” Mikasa says solemnly. “We’re about ten minutes from Trost.”

“It’s probably a throwback to Dark Age witches,” Sasha shrugs. “Witches would’ve lived rurally back then.”

“Where would _you_ live if you didn’t wanna get caught by some government mandate?” Jean grumbles. “Best place for hiding out, obviously.”

Jean catches Connie’s frown in the wing mirror of the Range Rover, and watches as he shrinks even lower in his seat, crossing his arms begrudgingly over his chest.

“I know that,” he grumbles, and Jean’s not sure to which of them he’s replying. “Not stupid.”

“Coulda fooled me.”

Jean gets another kick to the back of his seat.

 

* * *

 

Trost itself is quite special. Jean’s lived in this part of England for some time now – but he’s always been a city boy, growing up in the dodgy end of Bristol in a house that had last seen a lick of paint in the mid-nineties – and it’s a far cry from this.

The village of Trost is beautiful – and reminds Jean of a photograph on a chocolate box, or on a Christmas card from some distant relative that Jean has never met, wishing him condolences for the first Christmas he’s spent alone. Dry-stone walls crumble either side of the lane that weaves through the village like a grey-stone river, glistening with raindrops and crystals of frost, whilst picket-gates and mildewy fences wilt beneath the muddy shadows of oak trees. The damp smell of rain-rotting wood seeps into the cabin of the Range Rover through the heating system, reminding Jean of the smell of a bonfire that will never hope of lighting. Limestone cottages are nestled amongst rolling hills and frost-bitten fields, swallowed up by waves of morning fog still clinging to the grass long after the turn of a dawn tide. Plumes of snow-white smoke puff from the chimney tops that peep between the bows of bare trees, whose branches yearn skyward, stretched out far-reaching like bony, stalagmite fingers in search of sunlight. On the horizon, hills leap out of the low-lying fog like the spines of sea monsters, diving deep beneath the surface of the sky silently, rippleless and waveless where the dense, grey clouds blend seamlessly with the countryside.

The silence that envelops the village amidst the fog reminds Jean of a kiss – it strikes him and enraptures him in much the same way, and he feels a sudden movement or even a word on his part would spoil the magic. There’s something melancholy about this sort of winter – the snowless winter, the rain-damp winter, the grey and the miserable and the oddly beautiful – and it has all of them spellbound.

Mikasa rolls the car into the car park of a pub, gravel crunching beneath her tires. Ornate streetlamps are already lit, confused by the bright-sucking fog, but fall flat against the dullness of the natural light. There are a few other cars abandoned nearby, but they’re all old and clapped-out, coated in mud up to their wheel arches, and devoid of any sign of life. There is no-one to be seen. Jean wonders if the rest of them feel the same sense of unease as him, but he supposes that’s hoping for a little too much.

“Wow,” Connie whispers, “I take it back. I totally get why you’d want to hide out here.”

 

* * *

 

**Prohibition of Witchcraft and Related Practices Act, 2015**

**2015 Chapter 3**

An Act to make new provision relating to persons who practice or promote the study of witchcraft; to prohibit the practice of witchcraft, sorcery, shamanism, and magical practice within the United Kingdom; to make a provision for the enforcement of New Christian law as dictated by Parliamentary regulation; to enable all registered employers to be required to publish information about magical practices of all employees; to distribute appropriate rehabilitation therefor.

Be it enacted by the Queen's most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:—

 

Jean shuts his handbook with a sigh, tossing the thin, black journal onto his single bed with a dull thump. The cover is a little bit battered and a little bit worn, and sometimes Connie and Eren like to play keep-me-up with it when they’re drunk and want to tease him about having the legislation on paper, and not on PDF on his phone like everyone else living in the 21st century – but Jean likes his little book. It belonged to his parents, and it feels nice carrying a part of them with him when he’s out on work.

He turns back to his suitcase, settling it with a firm glare. He wishes he had been given longer to pack this morning – because somehow he’s thrown in far too many pairs of jeans, but only two t-shirts, and three-and-a-half pairs of socks – and he has no clue how long they’re going to be in town. He tosses a few pairs of shoes under the bed, and flings his wash bag and towel into the ensuite unceremoniously, but decides not to unpack his clothes, heaving his case off the end of the bed to be abandoned on the floor. He’s lucky that he’s rooming with Connie this time around, because whilst Mikasa would never out-rightly tell him off for making a mess, but she’d eye him reproachfully from across the room.

Jean’s grown pretty used to this life over the year he’s had working for the Bureau. He’s used to Levi calling meetings at stupid o’clock at night, and he’s used to ferrying out of town with the early morning traffic, and he’s used to spending nights in shitty hotels, or in spare bedrooms above pubs, or, on the odd occasion, camped out on airbeds in the boot of Mikasa’s Range Rover.

He’s lucky this time. They’re staying at the pub – which had turned out to be very welcoming, despite Jean’s reservations about the ghost-town when they were piling out of the car – and he’s got a real bed with a real pillow, and the sheets look halfway clean, even if they’re ghastly and floral and match the wallpaper that he last saw in the house of grandmother. And he knows that Erwin – Levi’s boss – will be subsidising their trip and all their meals, which Jean can’t complain about, because he’s partial to a bit of hearty pub grub. (It’s more than he can say he has at home. He’s been surviving on a student lifestyle for a lot longer than acceptable.)

There’s a soft knock at the door to his room – he’s left it open, propped on one of Connie’s trainers – and he turns to see Mikasa. She’s wearing dark blue jeans and a thick, woollen sweater, her favourite scarf coiled tightly around her neck, but Jean has an eye for the shape of her taser strapped to her hip and hidden by the bulky fabric of her jumper, and knows that she keeps her handcuffs down the side of her Doc Martins.

“Hey,” Jean says, giving her a nod as he grabs his handbook from the bed and stuffs it into the back pocket of his jeans. “Connie and Sasha already disappeared.”

“I know,” she nods, “They’re downstairs. At the bar. Connie’s on his second pint. He said, and I quote, that there’s no point being balls deep in Somerset if he’s not allowed a cider on the job.”

Jean grabs his coat from the bed post – an old, ratty parka with a furry hood that he’s had since he was at university – and pats down the pockets to feel for his taser, his handcuffs, and his pepper spray.

“Standard,” he laments, rolling his eyes. “You wanna get going?”

Mikasa nods, and Jean feels a little proud that he knows her enough that he’s aware of when she’s restless. (Or, more accurately, he knows that trying his luck and asking if he can have a drink too is pushing the boat out way too far.)

“Yeah,” she says, “I thought we could go for a walk around and have a look at the village. I want to chat to some locals and see if we can get any leads. I don’t know if you’ve read Levi’s briefing, but it’s quite bare on the grounds in terms of details.”

“Sounds like a date,” Jean grins cheekily. Mikasa purses her lips into an sour pucker, shrinking down inside the coil of her scarf.

“It’s not a date,” she says seriously.

“I know, I know,” Jean teases, slipping on his goat with as much grace as a two-legged horse. He grabs his room key and squeezes past Mikasa, knocking Connie’s shoe out from under the door, letting it swing closed. “Just messing. Let’s go.”

 

* * *

 

It’s cold as _balls_ outside – or that’s at least what Jean tells Mikasa when they step out of the pub foyer and into the scathing, frosty afternoon. He’s a little bit jealous of Connie and Sasha – who were still sat at the bar when Jean passed them by, chatting animatedly to the girl tapping their cider – and he immediately finds himself longing for a radiator to which he can cling and defrost his rapidly freezing extremities.

“I’m sure they’ll be able to do plenty reconnaissance inside,” Mikasa says, setting the pace as they begin marching down the road in the direction which she has chosen. “People are more likely to talk after they’ve had a drink.”

That’s not why Jean’s annoyed per say, but he nods anyway, deciding not to tell his partner that he’s really just jealous that _they_ can sit on their arses in the warmth, whilst _he_ has to traipse around in the mud, doing the literal dirty work. The thought of a stout lager, a plate of chips and steak pie, and low-browed ceilings trapping in all the warmth of a crackling fire has him practically salivating.

No matter, he tells himself. He’s the one who’s meant to be catching a witch. He should really put in the leg work for it.

 

* * *

 

There are bonuses to their brisk walk through the Somerset countryside, and the most obvious of those is the way Mikasa’s cheeks become rosy red the more they brave the chaffing wind. Jean steals sideways glances at her whenever he can, smiling happily to himself beneath the mask of his scarf where she cannot see.

It doesn’t take long to walk the length of the village and then back again, but the hill makes Jean’s calves and lungs burn acidly, and he regrets eating so much junk food over Christmas – he’s really let himself go over the holiday period. He hopes Mikasa doesn’t see how much he’s wheezing, but it would be hard not to miss. (He imagines his dependence on cigarettes isn’t exactly helping matters either, but admitting to that means that Levi wins.)

They don’t meet many people dawdling in the streets – Jean figures most of the locals have their prioritises straight, and are at home, crowded around the fire, or in the pub, crowded around a pint of bitter or three – but Mikasa engages in easy, friendly conversation with a dog walker, a couple of kids on bikes, and an old lady with her shopping basket on her way to the newsagents, all under the pretence that she and her _boyfriend_ – (Jean straightens up a bit at that) – are looking to buy their first house out here, and want to know what it’s like to live in the area.

There’s not much to know of interest. The kids on the bikes shrug and give her a confused look, but tell Jean that there are some good sledding hills at the top of the village for when the snow comes; the dog walker mumbles something about the best footpaths for country walks – but neither Jean or Mikasa can really tell, because his Somerset accent is so thick and indecipherable; and the old lady squawks about the pub, insisting that they serve the best local food in the area and that Jean and Mikasa have to eat there if they haven’t yet, and then begins to ramble about how it’s so nice to see two young people starting a life together outside the city.

Mikasa smiles prettily at the lady, thanking her graciously, and then takes Jean’s arm in hers as they part ways and continue down the road. When they turn the corner in the lane, losing sight of the old woman as she continues to trundle down the hill, Mikasa immediately releases him, pretending like nothing happened. Jean thinks it was nice whilst it lasted.

“Should we split up?” she says curtly, turning to face him in the middle of the road.

“Split up?” Jean gasps, “But you just told that woman we were ready to move into together!”

Mikasa smacks him on the shoulder – his coat is puffy enough to absorb the blow so that he barely feels it – but he’s pleased to see that his silliness begs a reluctant smile on her lips.

“Jean,” she says, trying to supress the quirk of her mouth, but failing. Amusement sounds nice in her voice. “Serious. Let’s split up. We’ll cover more ground, twice as quick. We can meet back at the pub for dinner, and see what leads we can piece together.”

Jean can’t help mimicking her smile, even though he’s not a humongous fan of being left alone on a job like this. Not that he doesn’t doubt Mikasa’s ability to get him out of trouble should he find himself in it, but— but he’s not as brave as he is with her, when he’s working on his own. Still, he nods anyway, because she doesn’t need to know that.

“Sure. Sounds like a plan. I’ll see you in a couple hours, then.”

 

* * *

 

Jean tries his best – for a while. But it doesn’t take long before his hands are stuffed deep in his pockets, and he’s more focussed on kicking a stone along the road than chatting to the few and far-between people he sees between the limestone cottages that he passes.

He loses his makeshift football in a pothole in the tarmac and sighs deeply; the road ahead of him peters out into a dirt track, asphalt replaced by gravel and mud, and painted markings replaced by tufts of mangled grass dividing the wells of tire tracks that disappear into the woods. There don’t appear to be any more cottages ahead of him – or any sign of life at all, for that matter – but there’s a tempting force he can’t deny.  

The lane clearly goes somewhere – there’s a signpost at the end of the road that has been faded with time, but that points down the lane and into the thicket of bare trees. A chill wind whips through Jean’s hair at that moment, burning the back of his neck and the tips of his ears, ruffling through the quiff that he had meticulously styled this morning when he should’ve been packing.

Witches live in the woods – don’t they? It certainly reflects all the fairy tales he read as a kid – except probably minus the houses made of sweets and chocolate that attract little children for the witch to eat – and so he decides there is no harm in having a look. He can’t quite cope with the thought of traipsing yet another lap of the village, and figures that if the dirt lane looks like it leads to nowhere, he can always turn around and head back to the warm sanctuary of the pub a little early. Mikasa would understand. When he takes his first step forward into the cover of trees, a gust of wind catches him by surprise like the flat of a palm against his back, and he feels like he’s being ushered forward. He staggers a few steps before he stops, but it doesn’t happen again; he sniffs loudly, his nose runny and chapped red, but considers that the trees with act as a much needed wind breaker to the wind that funnels down through the village roads like a river careering over white rapids.

The gravel disappears into the sodden soil almost immediately, and the mud squelches up around his sneakers; Jean instantly regrets not pulling on his Wellingtons when he left – but he’s stubborn enough to keep going, deciding that his shoes are already filthy, and can’t get any worse.

(He’s about two hundred metres down the lane when he realises his feet are now both muddy and _wet_ – and realises that it _can_ get worse.)

The sense of nowhereness is something to marvel at, however. The village was already ghost-like, even Jean’s footsteps quieted by the shroud of winter silence heavy-hanging over the twisting, empty streets – but the woods are something else, something _magical_.

The quiet is a solace to him, and he is mesmerised by how much crystalline clarity is suspended in the air. The winter countryside is damp and muggy and faded at the edges like a vignette, but devoid of the white noise that would occur with rain or a TV put on mute. Leaves don't crunch beneath his feet, and twigs don’t snap, and felled branches don’t snap. He hears the metronomal _drip, drip, drip_ of wellspring water trickling from some rocky sheen into a forest pool of nebulas far off in the undergrowth. His footfalls are like tip-toes upon a bed of feathery grass. He wonders where noises go when it feels like they are no longer needed.  

It’s odd, at first – being able to hear himself breathe. It’s been a long time since he’s felt so peaceful; city life is always busy and bustling, and on whatever downtime he has, he fills his head with television and internet and whatever it takes not to dwell on bills that need paying, and jobs that need doing, and the slightly empty shell where his parents used to be. The sleety wind between the trees is less brittle and more melodic, its harsh bite stripped away by its tumbling through the gaps between tree trunks and branches; Jean could almost pin a silver song to it – something gentle, bell-like, and wistful – and it makes him forget the squelch of muddy water in his socks.

Silver birch twist out of the fallow ground, bark white and stripped with dark whip lashes and roots hidden by a fallow bed of orange leaves, mushy and sodden brown by rain that rots them into a thick carpet of colour. Sprigs of wet grass – slick with rain water and glistening in the flat light – pierce through the dying mantle, grey-blue against the brown, and holding a long-kept breath that seems to make the world too still, and yet too full of anticipation simultaneously. The world no longer is shrouded in grey – but chimes of alluring silver and pine that fade in and out of an abyssal consciousness.

The trees fade into silhouettes ahead of Jean – black and spindled shadows against the void of mist that lingers on the edge of the horizon, but never errs any closer. Wisps of fog slink through the trees, curling tendrils like coaxing fingers that charm and lure but dip and dart beyond reach of Jean’s own hand whenever he thinks he might catch up, and it almost feels like he’s being pulled – some noose of cloud around his waist, guiding his steps in such a way that he would believe it is his own choice to be enticed, when really his feet move on puppet strings made of haze. Maybe he’ll end up somewhere, or maybe he’ll end up nowhere. He can’t rightly say.

Somewhere amongst the sprawl of roots that creep across the path, and the spew of melded leaves upchucked across the iron-frozen ground, Jean realises he has lost the road he was following – tire tracks sunken into the mud, and once stone now wet twigs and soil beneath his feet. The air seems to yawn, but without the wordless whisper of the wind, it is still, tranquil, maybe even a little stagnant with the ripeness of wet wood and damp earth – but not like death, just numbness, as if all the frail life around him has not withered and died, but has just been preserved in time by ice and frost and rain; and emptiness, in the cloaking grey light that makes Jean wonder if he might just walk off the edge of the world without really realising he has gone. His feet move without his willing; he is curious if the cold air will burn when he falls into nothing.

Jean wonders if this is what people mean by witchcraft – true witchcraft, that’s not all doused in black magic and a heartbeat in his ears and what the pushy politicians in Parliament are so damn scared about – and they’ve been called here, not to arrest a person, but a place. A place that sounds like wind chimes, and shimmers in pale light, and makes his throat burn with a cold that has him fearing he cannot quite breathe. There’s fragile, freezing innocence amongst the boughs of the trees – if enchantment can ever be innocent and devoid of desire. Romance twines arounds his fingers, because the air is thick and sanguine with it, and a hiemal piano sonata haunts his steps. He knows this enchantment wants to have him lost and forever walking.

He feels like he’s wandering through a spell.

And then there’s a cry.

It’s a shrill bray, which Jean doubts is human, but it sets a flock of crows that Jean had not spotted shooting out of the boughs of the naked trees overhead, tumbling and spinning wildly skyward in an orchestra of croaking caws that make him shiver and stumble clumsily. The animal whinnies again, and it’s quieter, a little more faded, but close; Jean twists his head in the direction of the cry. It can’t be more than twenty or thirty metres into the undergrowth – and whatever it is, is in pain.

Jean can’t stop his feet from straying from the path – the path that has already disappeared into the mud and the fog and left him wandering through the forever-white – drawn by some bold curiosity or cruel solidarity for what it feels like to hurt with a throat scorched by a white-hot cold. His shoes sink in the thick paste of leaves and dirt and he staggers through the brushwood, clinging to the silver bark of birch trees to save himself from stumbling and sinking into the mud without the repose that the air around him longs for, and the swallowing-up that the forest clearly desires of him.

Whatever it is that is hurt – because it’s definitely _hurt_ , in some way, seeing as Jean knows how desperation sounds tinny and thin and shattering when wounded – continues to call out, but it’s cries grow weaker, spliced with heavy, breathy grunts as Jean draws closer. He stumbles up the side of a bank – maybe a brook one bubbled in the hollow, but has since become viscous with mud – scrambling with his red-raw fingers for tufts of grass to wrap his fists around and not plunge his hands into the icy mulch; and nearly slips as he careens down the other side, feet sliding in the loose and gluey soil.

Crags of limestone rock emerge from the mushy ground as carrocks, and the earth beneath Jean’s feed begins to rise in an upwards slope towards them. A rabbit run twists through the maze of tree trunks and snowless wild, snaking towards a gap between the rocky faces, just wide enough for a small animal – or maybe Jean if he breathed in – to slip through. The weeping of the animal echoes from within.

If this is a dream, Jean reasons, he’s going to end up following the sound of the cry whether his reservations like it or not.

The air is wet and muggy on his lips beneath the shadows of the rocky outcrop, the stone slick with moss that brushes against his coat as he squeezes through the passage, leaving streaks of oily water across his parka. The earth is spongey, but pitted with shards of stone that have broken from the rock face over time, and Jean catches his toe on them more than once, distracted by lungfuls of still air that taste loamy on his tongue. 

The light ahead seems brighter – he doesn’t realise it until he turns a sharp corner in the rocky gulley, and a mushroom-lined meadow beneath the trees opens up before him. He hears chimes within the trees, as if there are bells strung up in the branches high above his head, tingling with every sighing breath of the earth that inflates within his own languid chest like synth. His throat is numb; his heart doesn’t seem to beat; he doesn’t forget how to breathe, but instead finds that he just doesn’t need to. The sun has broken through the cloak of cloud as a pillar of fogless air that spotlights upon the fairy circle – a white and wintery sun that has been bleached both hazy and harsh – and it refracts through the beads of dew that clings like adamantine jewels to the silver-blue grass beneath Jean’s feet. He thinks that he might be standing atop a field of diamonds for how the woods around him seem to sparkle.

In the centre of the meadow, there is a deer. Not just a deer – a _stag_. A proud and noble stag, all rippling muscle in its feathered chest and velvet antlers like a crowd sprouting between his ears, groaning wearily in puffs of warm breath that mushroom like plumes of dust in the clear and crystal air as he lies upon his side, his flank wheezing in a heavy rise and fall.

He’s hurt. He is not alone.

Jean finds himself frozen – the cold that crystallises upon his skin seeps now into his bones and turns him to icy metal – and backs up against the limestone, hands splayed flat against the rock either side of him. His insides burn; his lungs silver-plate in frost.

There is a man bowed over the wounded deer. Jean has never seen anything quite like it. He’s mesmerised.

The sun shines broadly across the man’s back, reflecting in the rainwater caught in his dark hair. Freckles pepper his skin like stars, and he is bundled up to the chin in downy layers. He is draped in a grey woollen overcoat, fanning out on the grass behind him – and beneath this, Jean can see a limp shirt collar peeping over the high-neck of a knitted sweater. The man is wearing dark jeans – a little worn and faded across the thighs – and dark-green, mud-splattered Hunters up to his knees. There’s a mulberry-red tartan scarf wrapped at least three times around his neck, cascading down over his shoulder in a tail that ends in tassels. Something about him seems moth-eaten and weather-worn, and he looks a little dated – as if his coat has seen more than a few winters, and his scarf has been darned by hand, and his boots are a hand-me-down – but he doesn’t look like the sort of man who has just emerged from the forest as some sort of whispering ghost meant to lead Jean astray into a foggy abyss.

He has a pair of woollen gloves clamped between his teeth firmly, and he rests his bare hands upon the back leg of the braying stag; ribbons of deep crimson swirl like the strokes of a paintbrush across his knuckles, staining the cuffs of his sleeves with a dark, wet colour. It looks like mud at first; it looks just like part of the painting that lays ornately naked and coital before him, all deep earths and ringing silvers and pale, pale light that seems to twinkle with flecks of sparkling glass.  It takes Jean a moment to realise that it’s blood.

The man’s hands are smeared with the stag’s _blood_.

Jean knows his voice is gone – and not _just_ gone, because he feels the hollow of space within his throat where his vocal cords should be, but have hence vanished – and his tongue feels heavy and lumbering, as if it were never nimble enough for words, let alone the poetry needed to describe what he has to blink to believe.

The man has not seen him – and if it is a spell that Jean has wandered blindly into, he is the ghost, standing on the edges of the circle, who is seeing the ethereal, evanescent moment that does not, _could not_ really exist in his world. Jean certainly feels spellbound – but it doesn’t beat his blood and shake him spineless in the same way as facing down the threat of real magic, dark magic, dangerous magic does – he is not terrified. He’s hypnotised.

The man whispers to the stag in words that Jean cannot hear. Maybe it’s not English; maybe it’s not even human; maybe it’s the language of the forest that might only be found in runes carved into trees, or in the fleeting calls of birds; and whatever it is that he murmurs soothes the breathing of the deer to a slow, if heady pulse. The stag understands the words being said, and ducks his head, resting it on the bed of wet-metal grass with a heaving sigh.

The man has a wad of moss and winter leaves pressed between his bloody fingers, and is leaning all his weight onto an ugly wound that strikes through the coarse fur of the stag’s hind leg. Blood has mattered the dense fur around the cut, and Jean tastes the ferrous tang of blood like poison on the back of his tongue that has been so far so saturated with the smell of the wet earth.

The man is trying to compress the bleeding.

He’s trying to save the life of this wild animal.

The man’s thick eyebrows are twisted into a scowl of concentration, his shoulders are stiff, and his forearms rigid with unyielding energy. He is breathing heavy, filling the air with white smoke, and his full lips are parted in a winded huff, as if it’s taking a great deal of strength to press down upon the weeping wound and keep it clogged. His cheeks are red, exerted. His dark eyes are eclipsed by pupils blown like solstice moons. Jean is transfixed – the man is beautiful.

And not beautiful in the way that would have Jean grinning salaciously over a beer at the handsome boy at the other end of a bar back home, or beautiful in the way it means he still stumbles awkwardly over his words around Mikasa like a lovesick puppy.

The man is beautiful like a statue. Like classic, Renaissance art, to which an artist has taken a chisel and a paintbrush and carved a sharp jaw and dark eyes out of speckled marble. There’s something timeless, something _ageless_ about him. Some gilded and reserved and statuesque and fascinating, and Jean is staring, unwilling to blink out of fear that this really is the mirage of fairyful intoxication that might disappear into the winter magic should he look away for just a moment.

The stag heaves a breath and it startles Jean into thinking that it’s dying, and he’s about to witness its life be returned to the cradle of the earth – but the man rocks back on his haunches and releases the pressure on the stag’s leg with what sounds like a relieved sigh. He wipes the back of his hand across his forehead and it smears a streak of muddy blood beneath his hairline, already dry and flaking in the bitter cold.

The stag caws again, the sound raspy and deep in its chest, as it glances back at its injured hind and realises what has been done to congeal the wound. It brays in bewilderment, and the man removes his mittens from his mouth, shoving them into his pockets so that he might laugh brightly, reaching out his bare hand to ruffle his fingers in the forelock of long fur between the stag’s pricked ears. The stag buffets his arm, nuzzling the man’s wrist with his velour-soft nose, and it earns another tender chuckle.

Jean expects the stag to try to stand and bolt – now that he has the chance – but Jean’s mistaken again. The stag lies still, legs sprawled out inelegantly and nose sniffing inquisitively at the tails of the man’s overcoat, whilst the man unwinds the tartan scarf from his neck and props the deer’s hind leg up on his lap; Jean watches with wide-eyes as the man binds the patch of moss and green leaves to the stag’s wound with two lashes of his scarf around its muscled thigh, tying off the ends in a tight knot.

The stag snorts as the man pats his flank reassuringly and then shuffles backwards, giving the stag room to tentatively wobble to his feet. He’s unsure at first of his own four legs, carefully testing his weight on each of his slight hooves, but he doesn’t buckle and seems proud of this feat, turning back to the man and nudging him boastfully with his snout again.

The man shakes his head despairingly, as if sharing a secret joke with an old friend, and grins – and it’s a stunning grin that makes Jean feel just a little bit more breathless than he already was – before he hauls himself to his feet. He’s tall and graceful – as Jean expected – even in the swamping shroud of his winter clothes. He holds himself effortlessly, shoulders broad and head titled affectionately to one side as he appraises his handwork wrapped around the stag’s leg; the stag continues to nosey against his pockets, searching for something to nibble.

And then a twig beneath Jean’s feet snaps – and he doesn’t know why, because the ground is soft, and all the wood around him sodden with frigid rain, but here is the one stick in the forest that has the brittleness, and audacity, to crack with a noise— and suddenly he’s caught in the light of two, paralysed, doe-eyed stares.

Jean’s never been very eloquent.

“Sh— _shit_.”

The stag startles, bucking forward with a snort and a flail of bony legs – and he is gone into the line of trees and bare brambles like a spring buck, leaping like a showjumper over thorns in his way to disappear skittishly and drown deeply in the fog that preys on the edges of the meadow. Jean watches him fly with an open mouth and his rummaging heart threatening to spill out of it, given how far up his throat it has lodged – but the man in the overcoat doesn’t run.

He levels Jean with a curious stare, and Jean follows with his own the quirk that appears in the man’s brow as his dark eyes dip respectfully to look at Jean’s mud-caked feet. Jean realises that he probably looks ridiculous. Jean wonders if he should flee too, and stumble blindly in his hastiness into the algid.

“How long have you been standing there?” the man asks. Jean almost chokes.

“N-not long,” he wheezes, “Uh— like— like five minutes? I didn’t— I mean, please don’t—”

The boreal cold wants to make Jean’s eyes water. He fears the thought of self-made icicles clinging to his eyelashes. He swallows back his apologies as a gall-like lump in his throat.

“Oh,” the man says, and then he chuckles, eyes skirting to the silver grass as it’s tossed about by the keen lick of a breeze. His voice is gentle and softly-spoken, without the harsh bark of a west-country accent, and there’s something effortlessly musical about the breathiness of his laugh – as if it strikes harmonic chords without him meaning to. It rings like the same whisper of incorporeal bells Jean had heard in the canopy of the bare trees.

Jean can only feel clumsy and boorish in comparison.

“I—” Jean begins, gaitlessly. He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t want to be bewitched. He doesn’t want to be berated by some strange and enigmatic man who didn’t want to be found. “I didn’t mean to— uh, shit. I didn’t mean to stare, I’m just— I heard— _shit_.” 

The man seems shy – and, abruptly aware of how his fingers are encrusted with drying blood and dirt, he slides his hands bashfully into his deep coat pockets. He glances up at Jean hesitantly from beneath thick eyelashes, and Jean gulps.

“It’s fine,” the man says slowly, and Jean is fixated on the space between them – morbidly curious as to whether meeting a stranger in the woods is about to go the same way for him as it does in B-rate horror movies. His heartrate does flutter, but he’s not filled with dread. It must be the forest still playing his bones like a piano. “Did you, uhm—”

“Wh—what were you doing?” Jean spits out, interrupting the man before he can finish. “Uh— with the deer. I mean— why ... why were you … doing … that …?”

He knows his expression is hitched somewhere between guilty and terrified, with just a hint of _awestruck_. Cautiously, he cannot help but take a step backwards until his shoulders are flat against the limestone crag behind him. He swallows thickly, tensing his jaw, and the man’s dark eyes are on him with every flickering movement.

“He … was hurt,” the man replies curiously. “He was in a fight with another stag. He would’ve bled out.”

Jean’s not sure if the reason the stranger talks so slowly is because he’s thinking about running, or because he thinks Jean is an idiot for missing what is apparently the obvious. The sun falls back behind the clouds in that same moment, swallowed up by the encompass of flat grey, and plunges the world into a diamondless embrace once again – and maybe it’s a metaphor for Jean’s own dimness. He’s not the magic one here. He could almost laugh.

“I—I got that,” Jean quips nervously. “But, like— what was with the— y’know. How’d you do the— thing. Y’know. That.” Jean gestures clumsily between the stranger and the compression in the grass where the stag was laid, and then back again. The man presses his lips into a tight line of understanding, but doesn’t look Jean in the eye. He remains motionless, and Jean doesn’t think he’s about to move suddenly, letting out a pent-up breath that escapes too obviously from his lips as icy vapour.

“They’re not scared of you if you show them you mean them no harm,” the man concedes softly. Jean shivers, and knows it’s not just because of the cold. “I grew up around here, so— I would suppose they know me and don’t feel like— like they have to run away. I come out here quite often, uhm— looking for mushrooms and things, s-so.” He seems embarrassed to admit it – and Jean concurs that it’s a weird hobby for a man who looks about his age. (But, he reasons, maybe mushroom-collecting is the alternative to Netflix out here. Jean realises he hasn’t seen many telephone wires since he arrived this morning.) “A-and— he needed help, and I knew how to give it,” the man adds with a meek shrug. “He could smell the yarrow in my pockets. I think it’s not so difficult to understand each other in a situation like that.”

“Yarrow?”

“It— uhm— it’s a plant. You can apply it to fresh wounds to stop the bleeding.”

“Oh.”

“Y-yeah.”

Jean finds himself nodding – even though he doesn’t know why, considering he’s still, _surely_ , suspended in a dream – and the man is staring at the ground again. 

Jean thinks about taking his chances and running back the way he came, but there’s a part of him that is still more than enchanted. He wonders if he looks down too, he’ll see that his feet have been engulfed by the mud and he wouldn’t even be able to flee if he tried, because the forest is apparently not done with him yet. But he feels like the man is not a threat to him – because who collects mushrooms and keeps leaves in their pockets for saving wounded animals _and_ murders people in their spare time?

The wind whips through the trees then – a bolder symphony in the clearing than the tuneful, scaling sonata it was under the canopy of bare branches that look like the ebony keys of a piano against the ivory sky – and the man must feel it bitter without his scarf. His shoulders hunch and he tries to bury himself in his large coat, tugging the edges tighter around himself. He speaks again, his voice a little rougher with the brace of the cutting wind.

“Are you from the village?”

“I, uh— yeah, I guess,” Jean splutters, “I mean— I was just— I got lost.”

He’s not lost – that’s a lie – but it’s better than trying to explain that he was in the woods hunting witches because his boss and his co-workers won’t get off his back about not having made one arrest yet, and instead he found— well, _this_.

“Oh,” the man says, his mouth a soft, round o-shape. His eyes scamper to the ground again and he scratches the back of his neck, fluffing up his thick head of curly, dark hair. When he looks up again at Jean, there’s a lopsided smile toying with his lips, and he looks a little sheepish. “Me too,” he admits, “Well— I mean I’m not _lost_ , I’m— I’m from the village too. I can show you the way back, if you like? I was on my way home.”

Jean bites down hard on his lower lip and nods diligently. His cheeks are stinging – the end of his nose and the tips of his ears too – so it’s hard to tell if they’re warm or not. He doesn’t have an awful lot of trust in himself, so he imagines that they are. He can blame it on the cold.

“Yeah, uh— please?” Jean nods, and he lets the tension holding his shoulders stiff dissipate with a casual shrug. He plunges his hands into the pockets of his parka in an attempt to appear nonchalant – although the reality is that he curls and uncurls his fingers into fists whether they can’t be seen. He feels the lump of his taser against his ribs, and whilst he knows he’s not supposed to use it on people who aren’t witches, he feels just a little reassured to know that it’s still there. “If it’s no trouble or … or anything?”

“No trouble.”

The stranger gives him a crooked smile, flashing a glimmer of white teeth as he coyly bites down on his lower lip, before a lone dimple appears at one corner of his mouth. Jean sucks in a very cold breath, and really hopes the man is not some murderer who’s about to lead Jean to some abandoned shack in the woods to chop him up into little pieces – because he has an awfully _lovely_ smile.

(Jean reasons that there are probably worse ways to go.)

 

* * *

 

Jean is careful to maintain a tentative distance between him and the stranger as he’s led from the clearing, the man insisting politely that there’s an easier path around the rocky, limestone outcrop in place of squeezing through the middle of it.

He seems to know where to put his feet to avoid the patches of gloopy mud that threaten to suck Jean’s trainers straight down into the netherworld, and yet the man’s careful footsteps leave no discernible prints upon the leaves, as if he might be walking feather light. (In comparison, Jean must seem a bumbling _ogre_ of a person, socks squelching in his shoes and toes catching on wires of brambles, threatening to trip him more than once headfirst into the frozen undergrowth.)

The man almost seems to float; he appears a piece of the landscape, an effortless, quiverless meander between rock and stone and silver-blue grass that could never quite seem out-of-place, given how his thick overcoat seems saturated in a dim blueness that seeps like ink from the ground upwards. He seems at one with the possibility of wandering off into a distant nowhere, and perhaps it puts him at ease, because that’s where he came from and to where he must disapparate.

It does cross Jean’s mind that the man might not be a man at all, but an apparition of the forest. Some trick of the light, some sculpture of the fog, some magic in the air that creates sinew and flesh from leaves and tangled roots and fools Jean’s eyes into seeing what he wants to see. He doesn’t know much about spirits – that’s not his division – but he’s seen black magic conjure shadows out of the ground and bring dead things back to life and do things no normal person would ever _believe_ , so to think he’s privy to an old-world sort of spell is not an absurd leap to be making.

Jean doesn’t think this man is anything _dark_ , however – (and if he is dangerous, he’s doing a very good job of not letting onto that fact.) Maybe he’s a ghost. It would explain the moth-eaten clothes and the hand-me-down coat and his mop of hair that hasn’t been cared for in some time. Maybe he’s a man who was once in love with the forest – a younger man, infatuated with the spirit of an older woman who wears the trunks of silver birch like ball gowns, and whose lithe fingers are the branches, and whose soulful voice remains wistful and crooning upon the wind. Maybe he died here, tortured by some incandescent love, and in a moment, Jean will blink, and he’ll be back in the village and alone again.

Jean is strangely calm with this. He surprises himself. Connie and Sasha have always teased him for being overly neurotic when faced with things he can’t rightly explain. He supposes he should be thinking about running away – if not for the things he can’t explain, but for the fact Mikasa will skin him if he doesn’t come back with some useful measure of his time – but all that stirs within him in a sentient sort of transience, romantic and chilling in a way he cannot fathom words to describe. He doesn’t want to wake up from this dream and miss something that might just take his breath away.

Jean steals a sideways glance at the man who dithers beneath the trees, whose fingers trail over the rough bark of a passing birch. He seems to be deep in thought, eyebrows pinched together in a pensive sort of frown, focussed solemnly on the forest floor.

Perhaps the same sorts of thoughts are filling the man’s head too. Perhaps Jean is the stranger who has infringed upon his peace, and maybe Jean is the person who shouldn’t be there. Perhaps Jean is the scorned ghost of a lover, or maybe he’s just a pervasive intruder. Perhaps things are that simple here: where a man goes for a walk in the woods, talks to deer, and expects to be alone.

Still— the wind plays like a violin, aching and sorrowful and unnerving, and Jean feels unsure. There is something ephemeral bewitching at work here, even if it’s not the stranger. Jean doesn’t doubt it.

They come to the end of the lane at last, and Jean catches sight of the billows of white smoke like the sails of a caravel seeping from the chimney pots of the first limestone cottage that comes into view, half-concealed by the sweeping tendrils of ivy that climb up through its brickwork. The sky is dark – a deep midnight blue – and the chimney smoke stands out in stark contrast.

Something skitters up Jean’s back – an uncomfortable realisation.

He can’t remember seeing the sunset.

Hell, he can’t remember it getting dark. It was still light just moments ago—

“Wha— _woah_ ,” Jean exclaims, pausing mid-step to stare disbelievingly up at the sky. “When did it get this dark? It— it wasn’t this dark a second ago, was it? What the— how— how long was I—what the—!”

The man ducks his head and seems to shrug, a small, knowing smile playing on his lips. Jean would remark it pretty if he wasn’t so— so—

The man nudges some loose pebbles with the toe of his boot, and they go tumbling down the road.

“What?” Jean presses, glaring at the stranger fiercely. “ _What_? What just happened? Did something happen to me? Am I missing something obvious?”

“The woods are a little bit magic around here,” the man confesses timidly, “It’s easy to lose track of time if you get lost.”

Jean frowns, glare sceptically back over his shoulder at the thicket of silver birch they have just emerged from – the sky looks black behind them too, and the trees disappear into the gloom where just a blink ago there was white fog and dull, grey light. Maybe it was this nightime blackness that he had felt tapping upon his shoulder and creeping up upon him and herding him through the funnels of the woods. He reminds himself that he’s seen weirder, but it doesn’t stop him scowling at the sky, daring it to change colour again now that he’s fixated upon it.

“Yeah, I can tell,” he mutters, “I heard as much.”

The man seems surprised by Jean’s answer – as if supposing him to be less accepting of the fact; Jean feels the man’s eyes on him as they walk, and they linger curious. Was the allure of the forest meant to be a secret? Something to be kept clandestine and tight against the breast and not revealed to the outside world? Is Jean’s mouth to volatile for a world so intangible?

Jean tries not to fidget under the scrutiny, but he’s never been particularly graceful. He tries to busy himself by chewing awkwardly on a hang-nail, but regrets it the minute he withdraws his hands from the warm safety of his pockets and the frigid night air nips at his fingertips with razor-fine teeth.

It’s difficult to know what time it is – Jean figures he can’t have been in the woods for more than an hour, and yet the night has set in so quickly that he can’t help but question that fact. How much time did he lose? Two hours? Three? It looks like more than that. He wonders if he’s missed dinner, and if Mikasa is waiting for him at the pub, pacing backwards and forwards in front of the fireplace, worrying that her bumbling partner has gone and smooth-talked his way into a hole in the ground, or worse—

Still, Jean reasons, as he notices the man finally cast his eyes away and back to the winding road ahead of them that snakes up through the village, at least he’s found _something_. There’s definitely something magic afoot here – and at least one villager seems to know about it – even if Mikasa will be less than thrilled by his proposition that they’re here to arrest a forest, and not a person. (But still— it’s probably better than telling her that he wasted his afternoon wandering around and spying on some deer-whisperer with a penchant for mushrooms who still may-or-may-not be stealing Jean away to be murdered. Jean doesn’t need to imagine how Mikasa might react to that – it would be a heavy-handed sigh and a scathing note on their final report to Levi. Jean doesn’t need another one of those going on his personal record.)

Speaking of potential murdering kidnappers—

Jean steals a sideways glimpse of the man, and is pleasantly surprised to see that he wears a definitive blush across his cheeks. He has is nose buried in the lapels of his coat, trying to protect himself from the frosty night-time cold without his scarf, and it’s pretty— well, _endearing_ , Jean would deign to admit. The man is definitely Jean’s _type_ , and to make matters even better, he doesn’t appear all that threatening. And hell, if Jean gets lucky and doesn’t get murdered, maybe he’ll be able to swindle a phone number out of this – or at least a contact for their investigation. It’s something.

Yellow light seeps from the windows and doors of the first few cottages that they pass by, spilling homely feelings out over the asphalt. The man’s profile is highlighted in gold, an ethereal glow caressing the flutter of his eyelashes and the curve of his lips and the slope of his perfect Grecian nose. Amber shadows dance across his eyes with the shimmying of hawthorn hedgerows and swaying of low-hanging trees that line the road, reminding Jean of the shapes and colours of crackling fire.

His breath escapes his gently-parted lips as a white and muggy cloud, nebulous wisps that look like cigarette smoke but no doubt taste much the sweeter. Jean thinks about art again – art and statues and the soft, translucent cold of marble. He thinks about the perfect silence of a painting capturing a winter moment that cannot be pinned to paper by things as bumbling as words. He thinks about the dark interlacing of oakwood and freckles made of frost and a lone silhouette of a man amidst a street encompassed by snowy silence devoid of hard lines and harsh colours.

The man is beautiful, Jean reiterates to himself, and captivating in a way that could leave him fascinated for hours, trying fathomlessly to figure out why it is he cannot understand what it is he is looking at, or why it is that this man feels so— so _not here_ , as if fallen out of another time and place.  

Jean knows he can be shallow, caught up on things like looks and enigmas and things that make his heart fidget, but this is different, this is— _this is surely some beguiling trick_. People aren’t supposed to look like art. They’re not interesting enough for that.

When the man wets his lips, Jean realises that he’s the one now staring. He spits out the first thing that he tastes on his tongue – and immediately regrets thinking with his eyes.

“You’re, uhm— really beautiful, y’know?” Jean stammers, and then blanches just as quickly. “I mean— fuck, not in a _weird_ way, I’m not trying to come on to you, but— but like, you’re really— uhm. Like it’s usually chicks that are pr— _pretty_ , but you’re like— y’know? Fuck, no— I’m sorry—”

There’s a moment of awful silence as the man turns to Jean and blinks owlishly, entirely caught off-guard by Jean’s tactless word vomit. Jean feels like he might choke on his own dignity as it goes slithering down his throat.

“Uhm— thank you?” the man says, but there’s a lick of amusement in his tone as he steals a sidelong look at Jean, somewhat incredulously. “I think?”

The night spares little sympathy for Jean, creating long shadows behind him, but letting the man’s face be illuminated aureately by the hazy cottage lights and streetlamps overhead. Jean sees the wary hesitance in his eyes opaquely.

“Oh God, I totally just made it weird, didn’t I?” Jean laments, rubbing his wind-chapped cheeks furiously with his bare hands. “Not that it wasn’t already really fucking weird with the whole deer thing, but— ah, I shouldn’t have said that, fuck. I swear I wasn’t coming onto you, I was just— you’re definitely gonna murder me now. _Fuck_.”

The man laughs more boldly this time, concealing his pretty grin behind a coy hand in a way that makes Jean gawk. Creases tickle the corners of his eyes, squeezed happily shut as he chuckles, and Jean has to bite his tongue from saying anything else he might regret.

When he looks at Jean again, there’s something lively in the man’s dark eyes. He halts their pace – and Jean realises they’ve come to the bottom of the hill that meanders up through the village towards the pub – and then he holds out a friendly hand to Jean.

“It’s okay – I think I can forgive you. I’m Marco,” the man says brightly, an endearing tilt to his head as he introduces himself. Jean looks down at Marco’s hand; his fingers are still stained red with darkening blood. He pales, and Marco notices. “Oh. Right. That’s probably a bit gross, I‘m sorry.”

“N-no, no, it’s cool, I should just—” Jean interrupts himself by reaching into the inside pocket of his parka, knuckles knocking against the tell-tale shape of his taser, to grab his own pair of gloves. He tugs the right one onto his hand, and then extends it to Marco. “There. Hi. I’m Jean. Jean Kirschtein. From Bristol. Twenty-five, almost twenty-six. Aries. Likes long walks on the beach and watching crappy movies on Netflix. And my number is—”

Marco laughs boldly and shakes Jean’s hand, causing Jean to grin, glad that his pitiable sense of humour seems to go over well. He feels a little less tightly wound, and it helps repeal the cold still clinging unwelcomely to his bones. Marco’s grip is yielding but solid, and his hand feels warm against Jean’s, even through the leather of his glove.

“Where are you heading?” Marco asks, biting down on another broad smile. He wiggles around in his large coat, trying to pop the lapels to provide himself with breaker from the wind – somehow made crueller and colder by the change in the colour of the sky – but they flop back down onto his shoulders almost instantly. He reminds Jean of a child swamped in his parents’ oversized clothes, with sleeves too long and shoulders too broad for a skinnier frame underneath. Marco huffs to himself, but the smile remains intact. “Are you staying somewhere? Or do you have a car? I can point you in the right direction.”

“Uh— actually I’m staying at the pub,” Jean says, scratching his fingers through his undercut out of habit. “The— the Laughing Giant, or something?”

Marco grins assuredly.

“The Dancing Giant,” he corrects, “I’m heading up there too, actually. I’ll walk with you.”

Jean is both pleased and concerned about Marco’s proposition, more than glad to seize another ten minutes stealing sidelong glances at him when Jean reckons he’s not looking, but equally worried at the thought of having to introduce Mikasa to weird-guy-alone-in-the-woods-collecting-mushrooms-and-saving-injured-deer.

Marco smiles kindly and nods his head towards the incline of the road, winding up through the village to the pub that sits on the crest of the hill. There’s a twinkle in his eye, and Jean resigns himself to the fact that his reservations are inevitable, but the company of someone he can still make a good impression upon is at least something he’ll enjoy in the meantime.

 

* * *

 

“Jesus _fuck_ , it got cold quickly,” Jean complains loudly as he unwinds the scarf from around his neck, ducking beneath Marco’s arm as he holds the low-beam door to the pub open for Jean. Immediately, he’s hit in the face by the brazing warmth of a lively fire and the stale-sweet flavour of beer thick in the air, and he feels flushed. “Man, I could do with a drink.”

“Do you want one?” Marco says – and the smile coy on his lips that has not withered for the last ten minutes has yet to be wiped away. His cheeks are painted red by the cold and enflamed by their swift entrance into the warm foyer of the pub, and his thick, curly hair is more than a little rumpled by the pesky hand of the wind, even though Jean finds the unkempt appearance suits him, for all his quirky charm. “I know the staff here. I’ll buy you something – if you like?”

“You sure?” Jean says, not one to willingly turn down free booze. He wriggles free of the sleeves of his parka, taking care not to let the contents of his pockets empty out across the floor, and hangs his coat over his forearm. “Carling will do me fine, ta.”

“Got it,” Marco says, leading the way through to the bar. The pub is doused in that squiffy, homely feeling that Jean associates with wooden-panelled walls and dim lights and mismatched barstools and chairs scattered across an uneven, flagstone floor.

The walls are busy with old photographs, faded sepia with time, and with dartboards and placards and blackboards and _curiosities_ that have no rhyme nor reason but ooze character and history and the slightly musty smell of old smoke that has not been aired out of the brickwork.

It reminds him of being fifteen and trying to trick the bartender into serving him his first cider with a fake ID; of Sunday lunches with his parents when they were still alive, where he would stuff his face with Yorkshire puddings and gravy, and his father would get pissed on one pint of beer; and of cosy nights hidden in a dark corner from the cold, nursing a bitter pint to obscure the feeling of being unnoticeable and no-one and nothing.

Jean glances around, looking for Mikasa’s familiar crop of black hair, or listening out for Connie’s boisterous laugh – but he finds neither. Maybe he’s missed them, and they’ve got to bed. Or maybe they’re still out on reconnaissance. Or maybe they’re looking for him, because he went and got distracted by a forest that apparently sucks away hours in the day without you even realising—

The bar is almost empty, save for a couple old guys with hairy ears and thick, white moustaches, slumped on the bar stools at the far end, gruffly muttering over the football on the television – and so Marco is able to walk straight up to the girl behind the taps, his amicable smile propping up a charming _hello_ , before falling into effortless chatter with her as he shrugs out of his own coat. Jean was right about the dark-green woollen jumper he figured Marco was wearing beneath his outer layer – but completely clueless that it would be embellished with garish yellow _ducks_.

He can’t help but snort, sliding up onto the bar stool next to where Marco is standing, resting his chin in his hands as he tries not to grin too ridiculously at Marco’s questionable fashion choices. (He can’t help himself. He’s never met a man who looks like they’ve fallen so conspicuously out of the annals of a charity shop.)

It’s clear that Marco knows the girl behind the bar well – they’re chatting about something, or _someone_ , that goes completely over Jean’s head, and they both laugh when the young bartender makes some brash comment about some mutual friend’s grouchiness. Marco bites his tongue playfully between his teeth when he _really_ grins, Jean notices, and Jean listens to him agree with the bartender, confessing something about how their friend was up all night working on some new recipe, causing as much ruckus as a bull in a china shop.

At that point, the bartender’s eyes flit to Jean – round, inquisitive, and piercingly blue – and he has to straighten up just a little bit on his stool. She’s a pretty girl, with delicate features and shiny, golden-blonde hair scraped up into a messy, but effortlessly _perfect_ ponytail that keeps falling over her shoulder as she moves. She small too, barely peeping over the top of the bar – (Jean figures she might even be standing on an upturned crate) – but her expression seems kind and welcoming and almost motherly.

“And who’s this?” she asks, nodding at Jean. Marco seems embarrassed, ducking his head and rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly.  “Did you find him in the woods or something?”

“This is Jean,” Marco says, “And, uhm— don’t you dare say anything, but— actually yes. I ran into him whilst I was scavenging. He’s staying here for—” Marco half-turns to face Jean, an elbow still lent on the bar, but his hip cocked out. “I don’t think you said?”

“With some friends from work,” Jean says, and it’s almost the truth, he supposes. He refrains from using the lie about him and Mikasa hunting for their first house, because he doesn’t want Marco getting the impression that Jean is otherwise accounted for. (Jean lied before. He knows he is _totally_ shallow. He doesn’t want to inhibit his own chances with the attractive stranger who doesn’t know what a walking disaster the rest of his friends believe him to be, by pretending he’s dating Mikasa.) “They like the area – were thinking of moving down here. Wanted to come and check it out.”

The bartender shakes her head – as if she’s not surprised that her friend Marco has brought back a stray city-boy he found in the woods – and then offers Jean her dainty hand across the bar.

“I’m Krista,” she says charmingly, and Jean shakes her hand. “You guys are renting the rooms upstairs, aren’t you? I saw you arrive this morning. A lot of suitcases for four of you.”

“Yeah, well—” Jean says, diverting his gaze to the rings of water marks on the wood of the bar. “Those guys don’t tend to travel light. Even for house hunting, apparently.”

Jean decides it’s probably best not to mention that half their bags are full of the police equipment that Levi somehow pilfered from his not-really-a-friend, Nile Dawk, over at the Bristol constabulary. He’s not sure how his new acquaintances would take to him announcing he has a police-issue baton under his bed upstairs, hand-to-hand combat training, and a taser in his coat pocket.

But Krista nods understandingly, and turns back to Marco with a pleasant smile.

“So, what can I get you tonight?” she chimes, “A whisky for Marco, and a—?”

“Just a pint,” Jean and Marco both say simultaneously, before turning to look at one another in light surprise. Marco is the first to break into an amused smile. Jean bites his lip and turns to Krista, leaning across the bar.

“Carling,” he adds, “If you’ve got it, ‘course. Don’t really mind otherwise.”

“Coming right up,” she says, before turning a frown on Marco. “Don’t you think about getting your wallet out, mister. I know what you’re thinking. This is on the house, like usual.”

Marco laughs, holding up his hands innocently – and at least the blood on his fingers has dried enough to be mistaken for mud now – and tells her that his hands weren’t even anywhere near his coat pockets. They weren’t. Krista must just know that he has a habit of trying to find a way to pay his tab the rest of the time.

 

* * *

 

“So— you’re a whisky guy, huh?”

With the warmth of the fire seeping into his bones and melting the permafrost that had settled there, Jean feels a little more confidence returning to his tongue. He’s curious about his new acquaintance, and wants to try and pry as much information out of him before he’s unduly dragged away by the ear when Mikasa turns up. It seems that Marco is willing enough to stay and chat – and Jean can only take that as a good sign. He ruffles a hand through his hair, hoping that it still looks _on-point_ , but severely doubting it after their folly with the wind outside. He and Marco have found a table near the chimney breast – in lieu of Jean being able to subtly spy his colleagues tucked in some dark corner somewhere – and Jean is carefully nursing his pint, trying not to coat his upper lip with froth.

The panes of the bay windows behind them flex and groan with the beat of wind; the shadows of naked tree branches like nobbled fingers scrape against the glass, silhouetted against the foggy, orange glow from streetlamps in the car park. The light outside is thick and mucous, eerie and disquieting, and it makes the fire that slow-roasts Jean’s numb fingers all the more possessing.

Marco sinks back into his chair happily, his overcoat draped over his lap, and his mittens shoved on his hands to conceal the state of his palms. He clutches his whisky to his chest like a cup of tea, stealing a sip as if it’s too warm to swallow.

“Yep,” he smiles, tilting his head to the side habitually. Jean grins in response. “There’s a grouse on the bottle. I like grouses. They’re underrated as a type of wildfowl.”

Jean snorts, blowing bubbles into his beer, which splashes up onto his nose. Gracelessly, he props his pint back on the table and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, before turning to smirk incredulously at Marco.

“Underrated as a type of wildfowl?” Jean repeats, amazed. “That’s not a sentence I expected to hear today. Or ever, for that matter. Anyone ever told you that you’re a bit of an odd-ball, mate?”

Marco shrugs bashfully.

“I did assume you had already made up your mind on that after I told you I’d been hunting mushrooms and you had caught me playing doctor to a deer in the middle of the woods,” he chuckles, “I could see it in your face. You were thinking: _oh my God, what have I just walked into_.”

“There was a high possibility you could have been a murderer. You seen many horror movies? Always goes down that way. Good-looking male character never survives.” Jean grins brazenly and Marco shakes his head with a delicate snicker. “Hell, you could still be a murderer for all I know. Maybe this is how you lure in your victims. Treat them to a drink and warm them by the fire – and then before they know it, they’re pushed _into_ it and burned alive. Just like in Hansel and Gretel.”

“I’ll bare that in mind,” Marco says, taking another sip of whiskey. “Just in case things go sour. It’s never too late to resort to cannibalism. And I am rather hungry, I must admit.”

Jean laughs, the feeling bubbly and warmed by the alcohol already seeping its way soothingly into his veins. He settles back into his chair, letting his sodden feet stretch out towards the fire, feeling certainly more at ease. This is probably going to turn out to be one of Jean’s favourite jobs yet.

It’s then that the door behind them rattles open, buffeting against the brickwork with a slam that makes Marco jump and Jean glare, and a gust of cold air is ushered in with the arrival of a figure too sleek to be anyone but Mikasa. She has her coat done up to her chin, her combat boots splattered with muddy water, and a bright red glaze furious across her white cheeks. Her hair is mused out of its parting and her lips are set in a thin, stern line – and it all simmers into a scowl when she spots Jean by the fire place.

She shuts the door behind her – ignoring the withering stares from the old men at the bar – and marches her way over to Jean in a way that has him cowering.

“Jean,” she seethes, and Jean doesn’t think he imagines the way Marco slithers as far back into his seat as he can, his eyes wide as he appraises the force of nature of a woman who has just barrelled her way into the pub. Jean tries to shrink away too – but he’s given little chance as Mikasa hooks her toe around the leg of his chair and spins him around to face her. His beer threatens to slop over the edges of his glass, and he squawks, trying to catch the spillages unsuccessfully with his fingers.

“Miks!” he exclaims, quickly propping the glass on the table and wiping his fingers up and down his jeans. “Hey, where were y—”

“Don’t _where were you_ me,” she hisses, and Jean gulps. She’s angry when she rolls up the sleeve of her coat and taps the face of her watch. She’s rarely angry – or at least, not on the outside – which makes Jean even more terrified, his blood running cold. “It’s eleven o’clock, Jean. We said we’d meet back here for dinner. I was waiting here for hours for you, and you obviously had your mobile on silent, because you wouldn’t pick up at all, and I was worried you’d gone and put your foot in it again like last week, and—”

She stops herself curtly when she notices Marco, trying his hardest to avoid her line of sight. She purses her lips into an unhappy pucker, but is clearly not going to say anything else, unwilling to denounce their objective in front of a stranger.

Instead, she clears her throat, folds her arms pointedly, and stares him down.

“Who are you?” 

She says it almost so bluntly that if Jean were still perched on a stool, he’d tumble straight off it with the brashness of her words. He pities Marco, and is especially surprised to find that he gets no joy out of seeing Marco splutter beneath Mikasa’s piercing glare, as Jean usually does with other people she interrogates. He supposes it’s not so fun being on the receiving end.

“Marco,” Marco says, swallowing heavily to try and gain some substance to his voice. “I, uh— I’m from just down the road, I, uh—”

“He’s been with you all day?”

“Y-yes, ma’am.”

It’s hard to tell if Mikasa likes the title or not – Jean reckons that she does, and probably gets a satisfied power-kick from it, although he doesn’t dare to ask – but she scowls and remains silent.

“A-are you— Jean’s girlfriend? Wife? Uhm— f-friend?” Marco dares to asks, but he’s levelled with an icy stare.

“ _Partner_ ,” she corrects coldly, “Not out of choice.”

“Harsh,” Jean mutters, but earns a sharp kick directed at his feet, which he’s too slow to avoid. “But fair, I guess. Look, Miks, I’m sorry. I got— I got distracted.”

“I can see that,” she says flatly, squinting at Marco. “I thought you were meant to be _looking for houses_ , and not making friends with the locals.”

“I thought it’d be nice to meet the neighbours,” Jean counters, “That’s what you always say after all: _chat to as many people as I can_.”

She glares at him, but clearly resents the fact that Jean has a point – and Jean feels secretly smug, despite the fact he knows that he’s in for a beating when they’re alone later.

She decides to change her tune, but it’s still just as prickly.

“Connie and Sasha are still out there, you know,” she tells Jean firmly, unfolding her arms from across her chest to rest her hands on her hips. “Looking for you. I finally dragged them away from the bar, only for you to wind up here yourself an hour later.”

“I’ll buy you a drink to make up for it,” Jean says hopefully. Mikasa narrows her eyes at him.

“Make it two, and I might consider.” She turns on her heel to glance at the door, as if considering something. “I’m going to wait outside for Connie and Sasha to get back,” she decides, “And when they are, we’re going to _talk_.”

Jean swallows thickly and nods, and then she’s gone again with a dramatic arc of her coat and another gust of wind as she billows through the door, and Jean is left in her wake feeling thoroughly bowled over. He can’t help a deflated, wheezing sigh.

“Wow,” Marco says. He palms his hand through his hair, flattening some of the wild curls back against his head in amazement. “She was scary.”

“Tell me about it,” Jean mutters, wrinkling his nose. “Are you sure you’re not down for murder? Because it’s either gonna be you or her who kills me, and I’d rather it was you.”

“I wouldn’t want to get in her way,” Marco remarks dryly, his eyebrows almost raised to his hairline in bewilderment. “She seems like a force of nature. She’s one of your friends that you’re here with?”

“Yeah,” Jean laments, “Yeah. Friend from work, technically. I don’t think she’d associate with me if we weren’t stuck together in the office. I don’t think she thinks I’m in her league. And she’s probably right about that.”

“She sounded rather worried about you.”

Jean cards his fingers through his hair.

“Yeah,” he concurs, “Yeah, I guess. I feel kinda shitty about that, especially ‘cus— well, guess you could say she ends up covering my ass a lot at work. But don’t tell her I said that. She won’t let me live it down.”

“Your secret is safe with me,” Marco nods, throwing back the last dredges of his whisky with the flash of a grimace across his face as the liquor burns his throat just a little too fiery. He coughs into his fist, and Jean hides a smile behind his own pint as he retrieves it. “I hope you don’t mind, but I think I better make a move.”

Jean sits up straight in his chair – and then regrets how eager he must appear.

“You don’t have to leave just because of her,” he insists, “She probably won’t be back for a while yet, so—”

“I really need to get the mushrooms I picked back home, before they— before they lose their flavour, I suppose,” Marco shrugs plainly, the heave of his shoulders meek. “My cousin wants them for something she’s making, and she gets pretty mad when they’re not fresh out of the ground.”

Jean quirks an eyebrow.

“You’ve had pockets full of mushrooms this _entire_ time?” he deadpans.

“Uhm— yes?”

“Incredible.”

“They’re— they’re not _those_ sort of mushrooms,” Marco adds quickly. “I feel like I should clarify that.”

Jean snorts obnoxiously.

“Dunno if I believe you, mate.”

Jean smirks around his words, and Marco – who had seemed momentarily concerned by the implication of his drug-taking – relaxes into a disparaging smile. He shakes his head wearily as he slides his empty glass onto the table, and then uncurls himself from the chair, unfolding himself to his full height. He cricks his shoulders and his neck, and smoothes out the rucking in his garish jumper, before finally grabbing his coat, patting down his pockets.

Jean almost expects for him to turn and had Jean a handful of slightly squished and sorrowful looking _shrooms_ – but Marco simply shrugs on his enormous overcoat, taking care to do up the buttons that Jean now notices don’t quite match one another.

“It was nice meeting you, Jean,” he says simply, looking down at Jean with happy creases around his eyes. “Or, uhm— well, I hope that your friend doesn’t scold you too much. Have a good rest of your stay.”

“Cheers,” Jean says, before adding hesitantly, “We’re, uh— we’re actually here for a couple days, maybe longer, depending on—”

“Well then, I’m sure I’ll see you around,” Marco complies, “It’s a pretty small place, and everyone knows everyone around here. Do let me know if you want to go into the woods again, and I’ll come with you. It will give me the perfect chance to dispose of your body.”

“’Course,” Jean grins, “Anything to be an enabler to your murderous ways.” He holds out a hand for Marco, and receives a firm, friendly shake. “It was nice meeting you, mate.” He pauses for a moment, thoughtfully, before adding carefully, “I, uh— I won’t tell anyone about the deer thing if you don’t want.”

Marco shrugs.

“I don’t mind. A lot stranger things tend happen around here. I would think people are used to it.”

 


End file.
